About the Object Request Broker

CORBA

The Application Server supports a standard set of protocols and formats that ensure
interoperability. Among these protocols are those defined by CORBA.

The CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) model is based on clients
requesting services from distributed objects or servers through a well-defined interface
by issuing requests to the objects in the form of remote method requests. A remote
method request carries information about the operation that needs to be performed,
including the object name (called an object reference) of the service provider and
parameters, if any, for the invoked method. CORBA automatically handles network programming
tasks such as object registration, object location, object activation, request de-multiplexing,
error-handling, marshalling, and operation dispatching.

What is the ORB?

The Object Request Broker (ORB) is the central component of CORBA. The ORB provides
the required infrastructure to identify and locate objects, handle connection management,
deliver data, and request communication.

A CORBA object never talks directly with another. Instead, the object makes
requests through a remote stub to the ORB running on the local machine. The local
ORB then passes the request to an ORB on the other machine using the Internet Inter-Orb
Protocol (IIOP for short). The remote ORB then locates the appropriate object, processes
the request, and returns the results.

IIOP can be used as a Remote Method Invocation (RMI) protocol by applications
or objects using RMI-IIOP. Remote clients of enterprise beans (EJB modules) communicate
with the Application Server via RMI-IIOP.

IIOP Listeners

An IIOP listener is a listen socket that accepts incoming connections from the
remote clients of enterprise beans and from other CORBA-based clients. Multiple IIOP
listeners can be configured for the Application Server. For each listener, specify a port
number, a network address, and optionally, security attributes. For more information,
see To create an IIOP listener.

The ORB uses thread pools to respond to requests from remote clients
of enterprise beans and other clients that communicate via RMI-IIOP. For more information,
see About Thread Pools and To create a thread pool.

In the Max Message Fragment Size field, set the maximum fragment size
for IIOP messages.

Messages larger than this size are fragmented.

In the Total Connections field, set the maximum number of incoming connections
for all IIOP listeners.

Select the Required checkbox if IIOP client authentication is required.

Click Save to save the changes, or Load Defaults to load the default values.